While another in a series of important events aimed at making the world safer from nuclear weapons occurs this week with the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, plans are under way to bring a statue of Mary that survived the 1945 nuclear blast in Nagasaki, Japan, to the United States for first time.

Actually, only the head of Mary will be displayed at a May 2 Mass at St. Patricks Cathedral in New York, reported Ecumenical News International. Its the only part of the wooden statue that survived the powerful explosion.

The Mass will mark the opening of a four-week U.N. conference on nuclear nonproliferation.

The statue once stood in Nagasakis Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception - Urakami in Japanese. The cathedral was leveled by the blast, which claimed an estimated 74,000 lives.

The Mass will be one of several activities in which Archbishop Joseph Mitsuaki Takami of Nagasaki will participate beginning April 30, ENI reported.

Although born in March of 1946, the archbishop is considered a survivor of the Nagasaki bombing because his mother was pregnant with him when the blast occurred Aug. 9, 1945.

A:The Marian statue of Urakami is in fact the head of a Madonna statue that survived the Nagasaki atomic bomb. Located in the Urakami Catholic chapel, the statue was destroyed during the bombing and buried in the rubble. The blackened head was found by a recently discharged Japanese soldier who happened to be also a Trappist monk. Below is information taken from a pamphlet published in Japanese at the Urakami Cathedral.

The image of the Immaculate Conception used to lie on top of the altar, at the front of the old Urakami Cathedral that was destroyed in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in World War II.

We have been told that the image came to Urakami Cathedral in the 1930s from Italy, being a carved wood carving. This image is based on the painting by the Spanish painter, Bartoleme Esteban Murillo (1618-1682) of the Immaculate Conception motif. It was painted and it stood two meters tall. At the time, a lot of people felt affection towards the image of Mary.

During the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, two priests and about thirty Roman Catholics were in the old Urakami Chapel for confession. The bomb killed these people and destroyed many holy tools, stone images and the image of the Immaculate Mary--all at the same time. That evening, a fire resulted because of the bomb which destroyed the Church, turning it into a pile of rubbish.

Father Kaemon Noguchi, a member of the Trappist Order, originally came from the Urakami area and he returned there after World War II, in October 1945. He visited the ruins of the cathedral and was shocked by what he saw, before he went back to the Trappist Monastery in Hokkaido (in the north of Japan). While he was looking around through the debris, by a miracle, he found the head of the image of Mary. He testified that crystal eyes were in the face of the "bombed" Mary when he found it.

Since then, Father Noguchi kept the "bombed" Mary in his own room in the Trappist Monastery where he prayed. He thought that the remains of the statue should go back to Urakami. So in 1975, the year of the thirtieth anniversary of the Bombing of Nagasaki, it was returned.

First of all, it was kept at Nagasaki Immaculate Heart Junior College. Then it went to Urakami Cathedral Hall of the Believers in 1990. It was displayed in the entrance of the lobby. Finally, since the autumn of 2000, it was laid down in a small chapel, in the right side of the cathedral where it has been revered by the people ever since.

In 1985, the "bombed" Mary was taken to Vatican City as part of an Atomic Bomb Exhibition. It was taken to Minsk City, Belarus in September, 2000 as a part of the Atomic Bomb pictures exhibition. It has caused consternation to people from all around the world by appealing for peace in all the miserable wars that happen on the Earth.

We offer also the following from "In praise of Furoshiki" by Fr. Takeshi Kawazoe, published by Seibo no Kishi Sha, 1994 [Translated by Atsuko Saisho at the request of Yasuhiko Sata]:

In the second year of the Heisei era (1990), my essay titled "Days in Urakami" appeared in the August edition of Seibo no Kishi Catholic Monthly. There I wrote that I was hoping to discover the name of the soldier who excavated the head of the statue of Virgin Mary destroyed and buried beneath rubble of atomic bombing [see left]. It was not long before I received a letter from the soldier himself who happened to read my essay. I would like to quote it in full, with the hope that the congregation of Urakami Catholic Church will always remember the divine guidance which he experienced some forty-five years ago.

Some of the liturgical objects of our church seem to have been taken away by American soldiers. It was fortunate indeed that the head of the statue of Our Lady, the holy guardian of our church was discovered by a priest from Urakami. I am still thinking if I should restore the statue to the original state respecting the discoverer, Father Noguchi's wish, or keep the head as it is as a token of the atomic tragedy. In either case, the decision will be made within the year. Finally, I would like to show my deepest appreciation to Father Noguchi.

Dear Father Kawazoe,

I apologize for my lack of courtesy to write to you a personal letter. I, Father Noguchi am a cloistered monk at Hokkaido Trappist Monastery.

The other day, I had an opportunity to read your article (which) appeared in the August issue of Seibo no Kishi Catholic Monthly about the holy head of the Virgin which had gone missing after the atomic bombing.

The head of Virgin Mary was discovered by a soldier who had just been discharged from military service overseas. In about the fifty-third year of the Showa-era (1978), he entrusted the head to Mr. Kataoka to return to Urakami Church. I wish I could know the soldier's name who discovered Our Lady under the rubble of bombing."

I have been debating, for some considerable time, whether or not I should inform you about the fact details of my discovery. When Bishop Matsunaga visited our monastery, I consulted him with my thoughts. The bishop recommended that I should write to you in person as you may not know that the soldier in question is myself. I have enjoyed the bishop's acquaintance for quite a long while.

I grew up in Urakami, Ishigami town (Yamanaka) and joined the Hokkaido Trappist Monastery in the fourth year of the Showa era (1929) and was ordained priest in the fourteenth year (1939). I must have been twelve or thirteen years of age when the statue of Virgin Mary arrived from Italy and was placed near the ceiling over the altar of the Urakami Cathedral. Her celestial beauty left a deep impression to my boyhood. I was then irresistibly attracted by the Madonna.

When I was to join the monastery in Hokkaido, I knelt down in front of the altar and prayed to bid my farewell ... "Dear Our Lady, I am going far north to the Trappist Monastery in Hokkaido, so this may be the last prayer I offer to you in this cathedral. But wherever I will be, may your protection and guidance be with me as ever." This memory never leaves me after all these years.

In April of the eighteenth year of the Showa era (1943) , I was called to arms and returned home in Nagasaki. I enlisted in the Kurume Regiment and was once discharged in January of the twentieth year of the Showa era (1945). Until when I found myself once again in the Omura Regiment in April, I helped Father Nishida and Father Tamaya at Urakami Church. The altar had been beautifully rebuilt by the time and the statue of Virgin Mary was housed at the center of the altar.

The war was over on the fifteenth day of August. I was sent home after being discharged in October. Before going back to Hokkaido, I wished to find a keepsake of the cathedral to bring with me. So I went to the ruins of the church and yet I found nothing but a heap of rubble. I searched about the destroyed altar and confessionals of Father Nishida and Father Tamaya for over one hour in vain. I tumbled onto a stone and prayed to Virgin Mary just like when I departed for the monastery as a boy. I was meant to return to Hokkaido soon. Praying for her guidance, I desperately looked for any broken pieces of liturgics which survived the bombing. Sadly, there was no sign of the cross or the holy statue of the Madonna. I prayed once again to Holy Mother to let me encounter anything at all associated to the church.

Some time passed ... I was praying silently. And all of a sudden, I saw the holy face of the Virgin blackened by fire, looking at me with a sorrowful air. I cried with joy. "Thank you, Our Lady Thank you!"

The destroyed torso might have been buried somewhere but I was too excited holding her head tightly in my arms to think about anything else. What a joy! It is inexplicable how I thanked the Holy Mother. I was half in a dream walking to the house embracing the head. My mother and elder brother were most delighted with my finding of the Virgin Mary. Mother was greatly impressed and praised me as if I was mere a boy. "My dear son, what a wonderful thing you've done! You must be blessed by Holy Mother. Take it with you to the monastery and offer your faithful prayers."

When Bishop Urakawa visited Trappist, I showed him the head of Madonna and explained to him how I had found it. "You have found the finest treasure indeed. If you had not discovered it, the Madonna would have got lost and most probably would have been disposed of like a piece of rubbish" he said.

It must have been in around the fiftieth year of the Showa era (1975). An article about the Madonna appeared on the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper and it became well known to the public including the Urakami congregation that their Madonna had been found and kept by me. I began to feel guilty to treasure it myself as the statue by all means belonged to the Urakami church. Coincidentally, as a priest hailing from Urakami, I was invited to the thirtieth anniversary of the Nagasaki atomic bombing held at Urakami Catholic Church. With the permission of the abbot of our monastery, I brought with the holy head of the Virgin Mary to Nagasaki with me and entrusted it to Mr. Kataoka to return to the church.

At the time of leaving, Father Toyoaki Ozaki from the Knights of Our Lady kindly took a photograph of me beside the Madonna to which I offer my prayers to this day.

Dear Father, ever since the statue was first placed in the cathedral, I have been deeply attached to the Madonna. Even after cloistering myself, I never failed to offer prayers to her. And I believe she also remembered me. Holy Mother has always been there to protect and guide me. She even trusted this humble priest in such a horrible disaster and allowed me to hold her holy head in my arms. For some thirty years, I had prayed to the holy statue on the desk in my cell. Even now, I see her burnt face vividly in my mind especially when singing the Lady psalms.

Dear Father, forty-five years have passed since I found the statue. I wish my poor writing could give you a certain account of my fated encounter with the Holy Mother. If it is ever possible, it would be my greatest pleasure to see the Madonna restored to her original state. Please place her upon the altar. So does she wish, I believe.

I'm not too thrilled about the way this artifact is being used. War in general is an abhomination, and nuclear bombing of cities is most grievously abhominable.

But tyranny is even worse. One might reasonably dispute the appropriate necessity of bombing Nagasaki (as opposed to some other target). One cannot reasonably dispute the appropriate necessity of defeating the Empire of Japan.

10
posted on 04/14/2010 3:21:31 PM PDT
by ArrogantBustard
(Western Civilization is Aborting, Buggering, and Contracepting itself out of existence.)

As a American and a Catholic I’m offended by this. Given the Japanese habit of subtlety to me the implied message here is that the Christian West(Americans) destroyed even the image of their own deities. At least to me this is what it seems. In any event I’m one American who is beyond fed up with listen to the Japs go on about the terrible atomic bombings as if America struck out of the blue for no could reason. I’ve had numerous arguments with people over this and have almost come to blows over it. The japanese were barbarinas in what they did in WW2 and they started a war with America and lost. If the out come had been different, if Japan had won the war you can be sure that the Japanese wouldn’t be sitting around saying to themselves “Gee, that was a terrible thing we did to the Americans, we shouldn’t have done that’’. We be getting our teeth smashed in with a rifle butt for the ‘’honor’’ of being a slave to the Emporer.

12
posted on 04/14/2010 3:44:13 PM PDT
by John-Irish
("Shame of him who thinks of it''.)

Roger Wilcow and Out! 10-4 -How about the Bataan Death March! Watch the old World at War on Cable stations today no revisionist history crap but the last 20 years produced tv shows have revisionist views.

"The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, and bishops against other bishops. The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their Confreres. The Church and altars will be vandalized. The Church will be full of those who accept compromises and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord.

"The demon will rage especially against souls consecrated to God. The thought of the loss of so many souls is the cause of my sadness. If sins increase in number and gravity, there will no longer be pardon for them."

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, truly present in the Holy Eucharist, I consecrate my body and soul to be entirely one with Thy Heart, being sacrificed at every instant on all the altars of the world and giving praise to the Father pleading for the coming of his Kingdom. Please receive this humble offering of myself. Use me as Thou wilt for the glory of the Glory of the Father and salvation of souls. Most Holy Mother of God, never let me be separated from Thine Divine Son. Please defend and protect me as Thy special child. Amen.

"The horror and perversity of war is immensely magnified by the addition of scientific weapons. For acts of war involving these weapons can inflict massive and indiscriminate destruction, thus going far beyond the bounds of legitimate defense. Indeed, if the kind of instruments which can now be found in the armories of the great nations were to be employed to their fullest, an almost total and altogether reciprocal slaughter of each side by the other would follow, not to mention the widespread devastation that would take place in the world and the deadly after effects that would be spawned by the use of weapons of this kind.

All these considerations compel us to undertake an evaluation of war with an entirely new attitude. The men of our time must realize that they will have to give a somber reckoning of their deeds of war for the course of the future will depend greatly on the decisions they make today.

With these truths in mind, this most holy synod makes its own the condemnations of total war already pronounced by recent popes, and issues the following declaration.

Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation."

The firebombings of Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, and other cities, along with atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were all immoral acts.

Allowing the war to continue would also have been an immoral act.

Checkmate.

War is not fair. God does not always give us clear moral choices when he puts us to the test. In 1945, we had the choice between doing evil and doing evil, and I like to think we chose the lesser of the two, but for the sake of the innocents who died let's be honest enough to admit that the lesser of two evils is still evil.

Rationalization is for moral cowards. A hero faces up to his choices squarely and accepts the consequences. General Curtis LeMay was no coward. He was a real man who wasn't afraid to face the truth. "Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time," he once said. "I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.... Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier1".

On one hand, LeMay's bombing campaign killed something like 500,000 civilians. On the other hand, the horrific death toll generated by the bombings -- and the atomic bombings in particular -- ended the war without need for an invasion, which would have cost many more lives. And on the Gripping Hand, if we had invaded Japan, Fukuoka would have been nuked, and my beloved Obasan (aunt), then age 10, would have been roasted, changing my entire life.

The guilt is not all our own, of course. We share it with the Japanese. The decision to drop the atomic bomb was not made in August of 1945; it was made in December of 1941, by the Japanese of the time. After Pearl Harbor, the development and use of the atomic bomb was as inevitable as night following day.

Even so, we had the final choice, and we chose to kill innocent civilians in order to end the war. There's no point in second guessing that choice. We did what we did, and God will judge us. May He have mercy on all warriors everywhere.

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